Rachel Yu

Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. My research is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the UCSD Center for American Politics, and the UCSD 21st Century China Center. I hold a B.A. in Government & Politics and a B.S. in Information Systems from the University of Maryland.

I am interested in American institutions, inter-branch relations, and US foreign policy. My work leverages statistical methods to analyze large-scale datasets and political text.

My dissertation examines on how, when, and how effectively Congress oversees the executive branch. I focus on these dynamics within foreign policy - examining how legislators use different informational tools to gather firsthand knowledge about policy outcomes, when they are more likely to do so, and how this shapes their interactions with and responses from the bureaucracy.

I am on the 2026-2027 job market.

My CV is available here .

I can be reached at: rqyu@ucsd.edu